Mia leaned against his shoulder.
After a while, she asked the question he knew would eventually come.
“Are you still angry at Mom?”
Ethan looked through the window.
Claire was standing in the kitchen.
She wasn’t pretending not to listen.
“A little,” he said.
Mia nodded.
“Me too.”
Then she thought about it.
“But she was scared.”
“I know.”
“And she was trying to keep us alive.”
“I know that too.”
Caleb stared toward the horizon.
“Fear makes people do strange things.”
Ethan glanced at him.
That sounded far too old for a sixteen-year-old.
He put an arm around Mia.
The girl watched the sun slowly touch the ocean.
Then she smiled.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“You know what the best thing about seeing again is?”
Ethan expected her to say sunsets.
Colors.
Faces.
Instead she turned toward him.
“I don’t have to pretend anymore.”
Ethan felt his throat tighten.
He kissed the top of her head.
“No,” he said.
“You don’t.”
Inside the house, Claire quietly began to cry.
Mia saw her.
Of course she did.
She could see everything now.
She stood, walked inside and wrapped her arms around her mother.
A few seconds later, Ethan followed.
There would be consequences.
There would be explanations.
There would be scars that no doctor could measure.
But there would be no more darkness created by fear.
No more invented diagnoses.
No more secrets spoken behind closed doors.
And no more pretending.
Outside, the last light disappeared beyond the harbor.
Inside the house, Mia turned on every lamp she could find.